Matt Kochanowski, product manager, professional imaging, Epson America, Inc. talked with GISCafe Voice about the latest new wireless printers in the SureColor T-Series with two more models coming out later this year.

What are the current SureColor T-Series products?

Our SureColor T-Series is made up of the T3270, T5270, T7270 which are all five color wide format inkjet machines. The only difference with the top level products is the maximum width you can print: 24, 36 and 44” printers. Then what we also have is the T5270D and T7270D. These are the same as the single models except these are of a dual configuration. You can either have two different types of rolls in the machine or you can have two different sizes of rolls entered into the machine. Or you can switch back and forth between the two automatically.

In the past three or four years, we’ve compacted all the design capability into a small 24” printer. I’m really impressed with what our engineers were able to do. These are for AEC or the GIS mapping community, either for at home or small office use, generating low volume blueprints, drawings, maps. We’re also targeting the education and corporate space, for printing in school posters for education, or for corporate to take any documents and enlarge them, or for printing posters for events that are being planned and promoted within the office.

What are the core technologies?

One of the biggest core pieces of technology in the printer is the precision PrecisionCore® MicroTFP® printhead technology. This is the same sort of chip technology that goes into business inkjet printers but also into our industrial presses too.

One of the main benefits of this head technology, as opposed to previous head technology, is it’s a bigger print chip. What that’s going to translate to is a faster print job.

We also have UltraChrome XD2 pigment ink. This is one of the first wide format printers that will have a 4.3” LCD color touchscreen.

We worked with one of the leading industrial desiners to design this machine. They specialize in a lot of automotive design and we wanted that same sort of feel, as people feel when seeing a sportscar. We wanted them to feel that way with this printer.

We wanted a design that’s attractive and appealing to customers, that they can also incorporate different things into their design along with this printer. Not only that, we wanted to make this a very functional design as well. You can see that it has a flat top surface. Even that 4.3” touchscreen interface can fold completely flat too. After customers print something off the machine, they can take it off the printer, or take their laptop and put it on top of the machine and use that as a workspace. If we’re going to be taking up space on people’s desks and we’re going to have a big printer up there, we want to give some functionality of that space back to them.

We made the printer with a small footprint, because it was going to go on people’s desks, and they may not have space for a wide footprint printer. Not only is the printer a small 36” or 24” design, it has an easy set up process. From pulling it out of the box, putting it onto the Desktop and initializing it with the aim of getting it ready to print, the whole process should take less than 30 minutes.

This is also a very easy printer to ship to customers. We knew a lot of them were just going to go on Amazon or anyone of our online resellers. We didn’t want to make shipping an issue for them. With the 3170 24” printer, because of the small size, we can actually ship this printer via standard FedEx or UPS Ground.

Customers don’t need to worry about special shipping instructions.

We took our base design and we migrated it over to a wi-fi format printer. It has easy menu navigation, customers can check supply levels easily, and can also update firmmare directly from the control panel.

Another feature we added in is integrated wi-fi, from a Mac or PC, with no need for dedicated cable. You only need a power cable, so you can put it anywhere there’s a power outlet.

Having an integrated Direct Wi-Fi connection in the office is great. Many people have their documentation on their smart devices, whether phone, iPad or other tablet, so they can print directly from these devices to the printer, with the wi-fi. The integrated direct wifi connection means they can connect directly to the T-Series printers. They don’t need to go through a router and they don’t need any special apps or software, and they can enlarge or send any kinds of files directly to the printer.

The same kind of high quality that Epson is known for in its photo printers is resident in the TSeries. Print resolutions go up to 400dpi for very accurate and very precise line details.

For many years, customers have wanted better Nozzle Verification Technology. When we used to run these nozzle checks, ink would fire out of the printhead. Now we can track how close the ink is to the printhead. The film in the printhead is vibrating as it is pushing ink out of the printhead and you can check any abnormality the film is having. It can adjust if something is wrong. If it notices that nozzles aren’t firing properly and detects any abnormality that the film is having, it can automatically move those nozzles over to nearby nozzles.

What about archival integrity of inks?

The printers have 4-color inkset with high capacity. One of the main benefits of our technology is it is pigment ink based. Customers with high quality photos need to be sure prints are lasting, so they need very archival inks. In the mapping community, people need to make sure maps are not degrading over time. They are also extremely water, and scratch, or smudge resistant. On the job site, our inks extremely durable.

With very versatile media handling, the T3170 takes rolls up to 24” wide. With an autosheet feeder, you can have a roll and sheets in the autosheet feeder load at the same time.

The T3470 and T5470 are 20-30% faster and larger than desktop models. They are fastest for printing blueprints and maps and have larger ink cartrdiges, lowering the cost of per millletter and the need to replace ink cartridges so often. They are designed for the AEC, GIS, Education industries also. Yet instead of having desktop printers on or nearby, these will be shared by several people in a workgroup.

In summary, the Epson SureColor T3170 24-inch desktop printer and the SureColor T5170 36-inch floor-standing printer deliver a range of features designed to help industry professionals increase productivity, including:

Versatile Media Handling – Accommodates rolls up to 24- and 36-inches and sheets up to 11″ x 17″ through the Auto Sheet Feeder

Precise/Sharp Detail – Print blueprints, line drawings, posters, and more up to 2400 dpi

Easy Set Up – Get up and running out of the box in as quickly as 30 minutes

Support and Availability

The SureColor T3170 (MSRP $995) and T5170 (MSRP $2,395) will be available in September 2018 and offer a standard Epson PreferredSM Limited Warranty.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2018/07/20/epson-announces-two-new-wireless-wide-format-surecolor-t-series-printers/feed/05562Utilities and Government Go “Digital” at Bentley Year in Infrastructure 2017https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/19/utilities-and-government-go-digital-at-bentley-year-in-infrastructure-2017/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/19/utilities-and-government-go-digital-at-bentley-year-in-infrastructure-2017/#respondThu, 19 Oct 2017 16:50:27 +0000https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=5167The Bentley Year in Infrastructure conference held in Singapore October 8-12, kicked off with a Media Day on Monday, October 8th. Among the forums that were offered was one on Utilities and Government, which showcased the company’s commitment to geospatial technologies that are inherent in all of their utility and government applications.

Aidan Mercer, Bentley’s Industry Marketing Director, Architecture, Engineering, Construction, spoke about Bentley’s approach to geospatial in this way: “What we say in GIS, is we don’t talk exclusively about geospatial technology, we talk about it being embedded in our applications,” said Mercer. “We no longer try to prove spatial awareness because it’s inherent in our software. We don’t tend to have any announcements around geospatial because it’s built into our software.”

The “Going Digital” theme of the conference runs through the different industries that Bentley represents.

Some of these areas such as water and wastewater, hydraulic modeling, calibrating networks, designing treatment plants – have been predominantly digital for quite a long time.

“The perspective of the conference is to connect those overall disciplines into a common or connected data environment,” said Mercer.”That’s providing the ability for a design application, hydraulic model application or sensor network the ability to talk to one another. It involves information that would be native to a certain application and making it available for another computer system to make intelligent decisions. That’s why you have data analytics platforms to predict and describe better outcomes. From an overall perspective that continues the theme of what we might describe as connected applications. With our partnership with Microsoft and their cloud platforms, we have been rolling out these applications progressively but now we have a more comprehensive portfolio.”

The ProjectWise ConnectEdition worksharing platform for sharing data is more on the construction side of things and contains relevant information and workflows for government and geospatial.

During the Utilities and Government Forum, several case studies submitted by Be Inspired Award Finalists were referred to that brought home the real-world application of geospatial within those industries:

Aurecon for the Zillmere Substation, Brisbane, Australia

The problem outlined for Aurecon was they had a 57-year old substation which required excessive maintenance on 33 KV circuit breakers and isolaters.

What they used were

LIDAR scans for as-built 3D models of the existing equipment

Engineers in Cape Town and Brisbane collaborated via VR

Multi-discipline design model

Virtual walkthroughs with Energex

The project utilized Bentley Substation and ProjectWise.

Sofia Municipality Street Lighting Problems

DAVID Holding helped Sofia Municipality with their street light problems which involved incomplete street lighting asset and condition information. They needed to reduce maintenance costs and time to repair.

Their outcomes involved:

Comprehensive lighting inventory

Single source of information

Maintenance costs lowered

Improved customer service through more informed decisions

The software they used was Bentley OpenUtilities.

Bentley’s AssetWise users will benefit from situational intelligence through Azure-based machine learning provided in Bentley’s partnership with Microsoft. The capabilities of this technology include:

Improve consistency and standards adherence across all participating disciplines

Quickly perform highly accurate lightning protection calculations

This application is now available.

PESTECH Automation and Integration of Substation Design Work for 230 kV Project in Cambodia

Be Inspired Winners in the category: BIM Advancements in Utilities Transmission and Distribution, this project was challenged by the fact that the site is isolated, with very challenging terrain. Manual and CAD-based design was time consuming and error prone.

The outcomes involved:

3D visualization to overcome site and transportation to site challenges.

Substantial reduction in errors

Time savings of up to 70%.

For this project, Bentley Substation, ProjectWise, Navigator and MicroStation were used.

PG&E Reality Modeling in Bentley Substation

The problem for PG&E of California was that 95% of substation designs are brownfield. They needed accurate 3D models in multiple departments, and for community and government relations.

Their outcomes included:

50% reduction in time to recreate existing substation equipment in 3D

50% reduction of travel to sites

Products they used included Bentley Substation, ContextCapture, Descartes, MicroStation, and ProjectWise.

BIM for Chinese Power Generation Projects

The problem for these projects was that they were charged to meet the massive demand for power generation with innovative, sustainable solutions.

Outcomes involved:

$1.4 million USD saved by moving from 2D to 3D BIM for Wugachong Hydropower

$7.5 million USD saved for the Qiongzhong pumped Storage Power Station

Tongzhou Water Works of Beijing South-to-North Water Diversion Project

Be Inspired Award Winner in the category: BIM Advancements in Water and Wastewater Plants, this water works had to design the plant for a heavily populated area. In addition, they had to meet government requirements to improve the building efficiency, reduce construction costs, and eliminate impact on surrounding environment.

Outcomes included:

50% design work savings.

Multi-disciplinary models estimated to reduce 40% of drawing audit work and 15% of construction costs

City planners wanted to build a 3D digital city for planning, construction and city management.

Their outcomes were as follows:

Image acquisition and production of models were completed in one month.

Imagery processed in 20 days vs. previous 10 months.

200,000 USD savings.

Used were Bentley ContextCapture, Descartes, and MicroStation.

Alberto Granados, VP Asia Pacific Microsoft, spoke of the Malaysia Mass Rapid Transit Corporation tapping into the power of Microsoft Azure. 80% of the population and primarily millennials expect the cloud to serve their needs and provide massive opportunity to disrupt. Malaysia Mass Rapid Transit were the Be Inspired Award Winners in the category, BIM Advancement in Rail and Transit.

“We are investing massively in Azure, and invest in 38 regions and four more will be announced,” said Granados. “We are bringing on 120,000 new Azure customers per month, 90% of Fortune 500 customers are already using Azure. We think infrastructure is unrepresented in this investment.”

Malaysia wants to improve productivity of workforce, and BIM or other tools are an imperative. Malaysia Mass Rapid Transit has the typical challenges of workforce, deadline, needing to synchronize different teams to reduce risk. It is the first metro able to demonstrate how the cloud can really provide assets without acquiring them and use them at any moment, in any size needed.

Agreements

Frank Braunschweig, CEO of ACTION Modulers, talked about the agreement of Bentley to acquire ACTION Modulers, leaders in environmental modeling. With these modulers, you can predict the impact of weather and rain on your city. Reality modeling can assist in putting that information together accurately and efficiently. Capabilities include:

Predictive analysis for urban drainage overflow

Flood early warning systems

Pollutant tracking

Key points of the company:

It was established in 2004

Affiliated with the University of Lisbon’s School of Engineering (Instituto Superior Technico)

Strong research and development team

Proven technology for EU projects

“There is interesting timing around the release of ACTION Moduler with all the flooding, hurricanes, etc.,” said Mercer. “This software is predicting being able to “optioneer” the potential of this happening, This means it can be predictive and it can model the potential of that happening, and integrate with our predictive analytic software. This is providing that environment by integrating within ContextCapture so you can capture site conditions and then integrate that into the environment.

It’s not very hard to predict what’s happening today. Where the digital aspect will come in is when the machine has the likelihood of failure or of weather or systems hit by unusual circumstances. It’s not necessarily being able to model the existing network, its being able to simulate that prediction beyond that point. You’re seeing this simulation going into the cloud so it continuously cross references itself to find those gaps.”

Sanborn 3D HD Maps for Autonomous Driving

There is an eagerness to embrace autonomous driving, but the bugs still haven’t been completely worked out. The problem for Sanborn is to reduce unattainable time and costs of autonomous car testing.

Their outcomes have been as follows:

High-precision 3D base maps

Substantial reduction in production time

3D mesh used in driving simulation tool

automotive partners visualize and analyze 3D models on the Web

Used in this endeavor are Bentley ContextCapture, Descartes, Sanborn HD Mapping technology.

Siemens’ Global Head of Information Technology, Helmuth Ludwig, spoke of PLM and highlighted joint development projects with Bentley from the past to their becoming an alliance partner.

“We haven’t spent a lot on digital assets,” said Ludwig. “We need a digital twin, to be able to simulate all processes on the production side. How do you take information from users and integrate them in all the steps? What happens when there’s an asset failure? How do you trace it so you can avoid it in future by having a digital twin of the product?”

Siemens has deep knowledge in several domains, in the areas of energy generation, process industries, etc. They can bring this together with Bentley’s most innovative tools to market. They are very optimistic this will bring significant value to customers around the world.

Rail electrification of mobility can’t happen fast enough. In the OpenRail environment, how can we do the best job for overhead catenary lines – a kit of parts and more? Siemens has developed for their own use good software for overhead catenary lines, that works well with Siemens other offerings. How can Open Rail electrical and the Siemens overhead line electrification best understand the control environment of the functional and the physical? “OpenRail designers will all have the benefit of, and will work very well with Siemens hardware, but will not be limited to that,” said Ludwig. “There will be no separate licensure for the Siemens rail and electrification; it will be inside OpenRail. This won’t be done for the first version of CONNECTEdition OpenRail. but for the next one, with absolute openness of Bentley Systems.”

TopCon Positioning Systems entered into a collaboration agreement with Bentley for the Constructioneering Academy initiative, for construction industry professionals to learn best practices in constructioneering, a process of managing and integrating survey, engineering and construction data to improve project delivery.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/19/utilities-and-government-go-digital-at-bentley-year-in-infrastructure-2017/feed/05167Singapore: Becoming a Geo-enabled Smart Nationhttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/11/singapore-becoming-a-geo-enabled-smart-nation/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/10/11/singapore-becoming-a-geo-enabled-smart-nation/#respondWed, 11 Oct 2017 22:00:06 +0000https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=5149Getting to stay at a hotel that was crafted using the software of the host company is a really exciting experience. The Bentley 2017 Year in Infrastructure thought leadership event is held at the iconic Marina Bay Sands Hotel, in Singapore, a marvel of architecture made possible in large part by Bentley software.

Whenever a host city is chosen for a Bentley event, it is chosen based upon that region’s commitment to infrastructure. For many years I’ve attended the Year in Infrastructure events and this one is no different in honoring the geographic region that presents a great deal of industry and innovation in infrastructure. The event showcases finalists and winners in the annual Bentley Be Inspired Awards, that demonstrate excellence in all aspects of infrastructure and land planning – from roads and bridges, utilities, rail, reality modeling and much more.

There are other Be Inspired Award finalist buildings dotted around the bay that also reflect the creative use of Bentley software, and help define the Singapore skyline.

Why are so many of these ambitious projects clustered in one city/state/country? In opening comments yesterday, Chris Barron of Bentley remarked, “The center of gravity for infrastructure is in Asia. One-half of our finalists this year are from Asia.”

While Singapore is a thriving city metropolis, it is also a small nation. It may be one of the first countries to take a leap into being a “smart nation,” far beyond the ambitions of the “smart city.”

There is a stark difference between the Singapore we see today and eight years ago when the Marina Bay Sands Hotel was built. The center of the 720-square-meter island was essentially seawater, and needed to be built up with many tons of soil shipped in to support the ambitious structures that would eventually make up the profile and economy of this city/state/country.

This is where geospatial comes in, and it is indelibly woven into the fabric of how the island came to support such structures and new economic growth. In Bentley’s world view, geospatial is a part of the whole, and it is a part of all the utilities, road, rail and construction offerings as it must be part of the projects themselves.
“Going Digital” is the theme of the conference and is really the way that these advancements have been achieved and will continue to be achieved going forward. The 2010 Winner in Innovation in Structural was the Marina Bay Sands Hotel project, working with the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), the foremost authority on all the building and infrastructure on the island.

Singapore Changi Airport will open Terminal 4 the end of this month. ProjectWise construction management is already in use for Terminal 5. The new terminal will be one of the largest deep water ports in the world. With this growth, one can see how we can advance our economy at the same time as the environment.

Singapore has a mobile penetration rate of 150% and is planning next year to have seamless connectivity.

SLA embraces the whole process of project delivery in construction and has a 3D National Mapping initiative.

A 3D cadastre is coming live this year, as they want and need a continuous digital context. SLA are using aerial photography and reality modeling to process surveying immediately and that is where Bentley’s reality modeling product ContextCapture makes a welcome appearance. ContextCapture is a technology that makes reality capture and processing available to small and large companies alike and can be used in a broad range of disciplines.

Over 75% of the sales and use of ContextCapture comes from Asia. ContextCapture processing from aerial and other photography can take place on apps on the computer but as a cloud service.

ContextCapture on all sorts of devices such as laser scanners, photogrammetry, even iPhones allows all reality modeling processes to come together to produce the best scan.

Deep learning starts with ContextCapture software and learns to apply classification to rest of the reality mesh.

Towards a Geo-Enabled Smart Nation

Speaker chief executive of the Singapore Land Authority (SLA), Tan Boon Kai, gave a keynote entitled “Towards a Geo-Enabled Smart Nation.” He spoke about Singapore’s push towards being the “world’s first smart nation.” This involves improving the lives of citizens, creating more opportunities and building stronger communities.

Using good data, the government can carry out better measurements and improve the nation’s performance holistically. They have limited land and unlimited space, and it takes just an hour to get from the airport to the furthest point on the island. Their goal is to optimize land resources for the economic and social development of Singapore.

Developmental

optimization of state land and properties

gatekeeper for land use in Singapore

Regulatory

registration of land and property transactions

management of national land survey system

Administration of Residential Property Act

Mapping and Geospatial:

Development of geospatial technologies in support of Smart Nation

Operation of geospatial platforms within government

Building up geospatial capabilities within the public service

The mapping and geospatial workflow includes capture, model, share and manage data.

In supporting Smart Nation, Kai said they need digital transformation, to ensure interoperability, evolving from 2D to 3D and beyond.

“Having geospatial as a key component reinforces that data is fundamental as a push for developing as a small nation,” said Kai.

SLA are constantly exploring new ways of capturing and sharing data efficiently.

What do we have to do to support digital transformation? Digital transformation enables us to deliver on service making and processes, said Kai.

“Ensure interoperability, adopt open standard formats, believe in open format and smart data so data can support a wide variety of smart apps,” said Kai. “It can be stored in our database, developed once and used by many.”

2D is inadequate to represent high density development, so they must capture and create 3D datasets with a high level of detail. This is very important to allow environmental studies.

Smart Cadastre development is also a key data set of the country and processes. “All agencies use this data set,” said Kai. “Our cadastre system will in future be called Smart Cadastre, and hope it’s extended in 3D format. We hope it will improve productivity, decision making as well as do analytics.”

SIReNT GNSS Reference Stations are developed to ensure the country continually gets the best position from the system. It supports up to centimeter level positioning, navigation, and monitoring, and is an open system supporting both public and private users. “We need to constantly consider improving the integrity of this system,” said Kai.

OneMap 2.0 allows public users to download and obtain map data of Singapore, today it was upgraded from version 1. Developed inhouse, this solution is a complete open source environment, providing high quality geospatial information for all kinds of apps.

3D National Mapping is done in partnership with the water agency, public utilities, and aviation of Singapore, and for planning risk management and policy development. It involves capturing data at street level and phase 1 airborne laser scanning and imaging and phase 2, mobile laser scanning and imaging.

Terrain models and 3D mapping shown in the 3D City model for Virtual Singapore is in a virtual environment.

Massive amounts of data are collected for over 6,000 roads in Singapore. 3D models collect roads and street furniture, and support driverless vehicles of the future. Laser scanning for heritage documentation allows the country to protect their national monuments.

“We are looking at methodologies to allow us to capture models and manage underground networks to integrate above and underground 3D Map,” said Kai.

Once details get into 3D data set, it will be great, he said. Both softwares have to be compatible and share interoperability.

SLA is trying to create efficiency without manpower, as it is one of the ways to gather efficient data.

“SiRenT is our positioning system that allows us to gather data in real time,” said Kai. “How can we gather accurate real time data? We want to consolidate all the sensor data we have.”

The role of the electric utility allows SLA to monitor energy efficiency. The problem for telcos and energy companies is the need for consolidated ways to capture. Telcos in Singapore are privatized so there is an effort to get them to share their data. “We’re hoping we’ll be able to monitor consumption levels of energy and are looking at ways to harness natural forms of energy,” Kai said.

“We need better insight into indoor infrastructure and how buildings are created as indoor data is critical for us,” said Kai. “You’ll soon be able to input BIM data, to increase the level of data you have.”

“Our challenges in Singapore in many government agencies, is how do you accurately capture the next generation of utility data underground, while ensuring today’s underground data is accurate?” Kai asked. “There’s no way of verifying underground drawings are accurate unless you dig.”

They will need to do more underground modeling, said Kai. Many countries share these challenges and if we can all find a solution in common, then technologies will be created to address the issue.

If these weren’t large enough challenges, Kai said they are working on driverless vehicle development, with SiReNT precise navigation capability for driverless cars.

Airfare, lodging and some meals were provided for courtesy of Bentley Systems.

The deadline for those entries to our Special Coverage of Online GIS Courses has been changed to August 14th, 2017.

The face of GIS and Geospatial education has changed dramatically over the past few years, with new online courses being offered in numerous subjects, ranging from GIS fundamentals to Spatial Analytics and UAVs. What is more phenomenal is that these courses reach out to all corners of the earth, making a GIS/geospatial education a possibility for almost everyone on the planet.

Our coverage will include a listing of all the top online GIS courses offered today, enrollment information and costs, as well as comments from instructors, employers and current or graduated students from some of the programs.

Questionnaire:

What do you believe students get out of an online GIS course?

What is your most popular course(s)?

Do you offer “Massive Open Online Courses” (MOOCs)?

Why would a student choose to take a MOOC as opposed to a traditional online course?

What are pros and cons of online courses?

What are some new online courses spurred by student demand that you are now offering?

What types of homework or self-study assignments are included in the course?

Instructors and students of online GIS courses are welcome to weigh in on their thoughts and experiences about online courses they are currently enrolled in or have completed. Employers are also encouraged to comment on the value of online GIS courses to their professional staff.

Submit your completed questionnaire on your GIS or Geospatial Online Education program before August 14th to be included in this coverage to Susan Smith, Editor, GISCafe, susan.smith@ibsystems.com

ContextCapture can turn photographs from any camera and/or point cloud data into highly detailed 3D models for use throughout a project lifecycle. The basic package offered by Topcon will be bundled with Falcon and Intel Sirius Basic/Pro and will allow operators to process data from the UAS into textured 3D reality meshes, point clouds and orthophotos.

The collected data can be processed vertically with cloud services offered by both Topcon and Bentley Systems or processed on premise from within the MAVinci Desktop flight planning and management application or using Bentley’s ProjectWise ContextCapture Share (for Bentley users).

GISCafe Voice: Will there be changes to customize ContextCapture for the Falcon 8?

ContextCapture, powered by Bentley, has been extensively tested with and optimized for Falcon 8 data. These optimizations are part of the product and ensure excellent performance of the Falcon 8 and ContextCapture combination. ContextCapture, furthermore, provides users with options to optimize results for their project types and goals.

GISCafe Voice: How is the bundled product going to enhance the lives of users?

The bundled solution, included Topcon ContextCapture Standard and ContextCapture Advanced, enhances user experiences with its seamless integration into workflows using Intel Sirius and Falcon 8 UAVs — post-processing can begin directly from within the MAVinci Desktop flight planning and management application.

The standard package allows operators to process data from the UAS into textured 3D reality meshes, point clouds and orthophotos. The quality and detail of the results will impress users.

Bentley Systems ContextCapture

Topcon ContextCapture Advanced allows users to process data from any UAS. Its integration includes CAD, inspection, GIS, civil engineering and survey workflows on desktop or mobile platforms, using multiple formats. It also includes ContextCapture Editor, which enables operators to take advantage of all project data by integrating reality meshes and point clouds into infrastructure workflows. The result is access to a wide-variety of reality modeling tools to help increase productivity.

GISCafe Voice: Is this a combination of easy to use products, i.e., how much knowledge does one need to implement it?

Topcon ContextCapture, powered by Bentley, represents the next step in the Topcon and Bentley Systems collaboration to advance the concept of constructioneering — allowing users to start from a reality-captured survey context and leverage and update their digital engineering models throughout the construction process, and finally deliver the as-built infrastructure in real time.

It is designed to be easy to use, enabling greater efficiency and productivity in the global construction market.

GISCafe Voice: Can you describe “constructioneering”?

Constructioneering is a term coined by Bentley CEO Greg Bentley to describle the combination of surveying, engineering and construction workflows to provide new efficiencies in creating affordable, smart and sustainable infrastructure globally. The concept allows users to start from a reality-captured survey context and leverage and update their digital engineering models throughout the construction process in real time.

Compared to traditional workflows between design and construction, in which data from survey and digital engineering models can be lost and inefficiently recreated, constructioneering provides seamless integration for constructible models that offer real-time updates and data exchange for improved efficiency and cost reduction.

GISCafe Voice: What is the time savings of taking data from UAS into point clouds, reality meshes, etc.?

Topcon ContextCapture allows mapping, construction and surveying professionals to quickly turn simple photographs and/or point cloud data into true-to-life, highly detailed 3D models for use throughout a project lifecycle, resulting in increased time savings and productivity.

GISCafe Voice: How is this point cloud data taken into a BIM project in a common workflow?

The reality meshes and point clouds can be imported directly in many products — ContextCapture provides a wealth of export formats.

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/04/13/topcon-bundles-bentleys-contextcapture-with-their-uas/feed/04863Knowing What’s Underground with GIS and BIMhttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/02/20/knowing-whats-underground-with-gis-and-bim/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/02/20/knowing-whats-underground-with-gis-and-bim/#commentsMon, 20 Feb 2017 19:48:19 +0000https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=4823“Disruptive technology changes the face of industries, but we are also in an age of disruptive data.” – Anne Kemp

Back in November 2015 at the Bentley Year in Infrastructure event held in London, Dr. Anne Kemp, Atkins, vice chair of BuildingSMART UK, Chair of ICE’s BIM Action Group, spoke on the utility topic, “Out of Sight and Out of Mind.”

Her focus was on knowing what’s underground in the way of utilities and using BIM and GIS tools to track outcomes.

“We need to be transforming our utilities through intelligent use of BIM, digital, long overdue collaboration, and common sense,” Kemp said.

Kemp said that the launch of the UK BIM Alliance was going to help their progress at the BuildingSMART UK for feeding data about their buried utilities.

She is looking forward to better information and management through BIM.

The UK government strategy is driving improvements across construction strategy, and by 2016, all public funded projects would be requiring BIM Level 2. This has been the evolution of the UK BIM Alliance. “Did all projects transfer to BIM Level 2?” Kemp asked. “Actually, we are a bit further from that in reality. Three million people must be reached. The guys who are being affected by utility strikes are those who we need to reach.”

In 2017, the GCS transition of Task Group to L3 (BIM Level) is predicted. There is a need for industry focus and stewardship of Level 2 and to achieve 2020 “Business as usual”. “We need the foundations of BIM Level 2 to be able to realize the ambitions of Level 3,” Kemp explained. “We are providing that industry focus of moving through analog into that digital transformation, through 3D modeling and integrated real time modeling. We are working at the structured controlled data in BIM Level 2. We’ve also got to control that uncontrolled dirty data, and how do we do that?”

There is a need to think about outcomes rather than just output, said Kemp, and not just discussing 2D drawings or data (or 3D). How does data need to be delivered in order for us to do our jobs?

“We have a convergence of what is needed with BIM, and that’s where the UK BIM Alliance comes in,” said Kemp. “BIM for rail, water, survey, hospitals, has a lot of interest around this area. The UK BIM Alliance grew out of government initiatives, and we are moving to BIM level 3. We need industry to step up and demonstrate BIM Level 2.”

The initiative really had to embrace the entire industry. By setting the mandate that they must achieve BIM Level 2 by 2020, they are challenging themselves. They are being innovative and inclusive and transparent.

“We target people who need to know about this stuff,” said Kemp. “BIM Level 2 has been defined. Bimlevel2.org is available and we’re here to help industry implement.”

There is BIM for infrastructure and there needs to be BIM for utilities.

What can we do from a buried utilities point of view?

What is complementary for ISOs and smart cities is working on an evolving landscape. The UK BIM Alliance is developing a taskforce on convergence with smart cities.

“Disruptive technology changes the face of industries, but we are also in an age of disruptive data,” Kemp concluded. “You have to have your people work through, understand and tailor themselves to the new processes.”

COBie to IFC processes

The BuildingSMART chair UK chapter is supporting the BIM Level 2

BIM enabled through to operations and maintenance

Not just about design and construction

TOTEX and total expenditure instead of operational expenditure.

The government is looking at procurement methods. The background to BIM is asset management.

Key decisions have to be made through the life of a project. You also have projects running simultaneously at different stages, so you need to be sure you have the right information, and data fed into a system users can trust.

“If we talk about intelligent mobility, we must know what’s underground, and are currently doing roadworks in a not smart way,” said Kemp. “The BIM Common Data Environment is a convergence of BIM with geospatial. It is possible to deliver 1192 with mapping and geospatial data. We’ve been doing it for some years. BIM isn’t geospatial or is it? It doesn’t matter what the technology is, it needs to be treated the same way.”

While it is a major contribution to the construction industry as a whole, Building Information Modelling (BIM) in undoubtedly the biggest change that will effect the geospatial industry over the next 5 years. However, due to the numerous sectors and specialisms involved in the industry, the implementation is dependent on collaboration between all participants and interested parties.

Contributing to the overall challenge is the fact that not all data is recognizable to the geospatial community. BuildingSMART and OGC can’t do it all on their own and this is where the UK BIM Alliance can step in and help.

Digital engineering models from Bentley help bring all information together in a secured way.

“If we are heading toward modeling asset performance, some us have been already, we are discovering problems,” said Kemp. “Assetwise is working with us around what BIM Level 2 is on the UK stage. Not being able to trust the data isn’t good enough, but BIM does give us clues of how to move forward.”

Survey4BIM recounts several challenges:

Legacy on paper still

Provenance problems out of data or missing

Reluctance to share. Security is fine, is that the reason people aren’t sharing?

Historical behavioral problems

Historic initiatives apathy or bias

“We are at a critical tipping point now, we have the opportunity to do it,” said Kemp. “How can we improve our buried utilities survey, and bring it together with smart cities?”

BIM4Water is an owner-operator group, BIM4Rail is another group headed up by Barry Gleason of BuildingSMART UK, who asked that people engage with the BIM utilities management team to raise awareness. This group has now worked through a process of collaboration, and people are comfortable with different media.

There are over 8,000 kms of pipeline in the UK. Compliance is mandatory and teams must use technology and follow the process develop by the UK BIM Alliance and BuildingSMART UK. They have coordinated 3D CAD representation.

“Don’t let your project be like the Edinburgh Trams 4 years overrun,” cautioned Kemp. “We can lose our common sense – how can we deliver gaming technology that will come to sensible decisions?”

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2017/02/20/knowing-whats-underground-with-gis-and-bim/feed/14823Mapping the Undergroundhttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2016/12/08/mapping-the-underground/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2016/12/08/mapping-the-underground/#respondThu, 08 Dec 2016 23:46:37 +0000http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=4762Utilities strikes are costing utilities about a trillion dollars per year, which equates to a hit a minute in the U.S. Many of these are taking place in underground utilities.

Metje is a Senior Lecturer in the School of Civil Engineering at the University of Birmingham.

In the ‘70s, Metje, said, “Mapping the underworld” was the first project focused on sensing the project and detecting buried pipes and cables. “What if we put sensors on pipes to find them easier? We looked at GPS and absolute positioning, and also looked at academia.”

“We’re in a phase assessing the underworld,” said Metje. “While we scan for where it is, let’s see about its conditioning. There’s a lot in your geospatial. Utility networks are more sustainable, and we should value the space we’re using up, and use it more intelligently in the future.”

Getting common data on utility strikes is easy in the U.S. but not in the UK, said Metie. The common data required for such an analysis will include:

Type of service

Day and time

Location of work

Excavation tool

Severity of damage

Root cause

“Because I’m in academia they trust me and in the UK I can get the data, because they don’t think I’m going to share it with competitors,” said Metje.

Most utilities struck are telecoms and electricity. Those are quite shallow utilities in the UK. This is in contrast to the U.S. where gas comes up quite high and a lot of that is overhead and things are done differently.

When data comes from different companies, it doesn’t tell you if the situation is getting better or worse. “We need to add in the relationship to the day’s work,” said Metje. “Companies don’t have that data usually. It can be correlated with work done and how much man hours goes up.”

Most companies don’t know the indirect or social costs of utility strikes, which are getting an inspector in, you had to shut the site down, or had to close businesses around it that might need compensation.

You have active and passive tools, that are used in 40% of cases. A number of services would be active if the generator was used.

A lot of training and a lot of pressure onsite are needed. The lack of these is why errors happen, said Metje.

Costs of utility strikes are more than most people think.

Electricity

Gas

Telecom

Fibreoptic

Water

PAS128 is a specificiation done in conjunction with BSI. Protection of buried utilities started in 2014.

By validating MTU sensor technologies, underground truth could be determined. Five commercial companies conducted a utility survey to PAS128 standard. They did a survey in Birmingham and these are results:

Restrict area to convex hull of area, chart showed

If you have two ducts close to each other, does company say it’s one or two ducts?

If you have small ducts next to each other, that’s fine but you will know not to dig there.

PAS256 is a buried assets code of practice that is currently under development and expected to be completed by early 2017. Its aim is to make data sharing easier and more consistent. It includes minimum data recommended for sharing and optional data.

In summary,

Inaccurate, incomplete or insufficient knowledge of the location of buried assets can be costly. (economic and H&S)

Indirect and social costs contribute to the overall cost of utility strikes

“People are using mobile phone to get a GPS fix and it’s not good enough,” said an attendee. “Leica technology is not available for every company. If you have a pipe, it depends on what data you collect. The top of the pipe, if you know what it is, who owns it, that’s prescriptive. By going to digital it is not necessarily prescriptive about the format.”

“In the UK, if the records come from utility owners, they say dig at your own risk. If it’s accurately on your plan, then you hit it, you can’t go back. When you get information with surveying companies it becomes more difficult. Surveyors would say dig at your own risk, they are changing this a bit, where the surveyor will take some responsibility. We don’t have subsurface engineers who will sign off on this. They’ve done the geophysical survey, and if they hit something that’s not on the record, they can go back to the company.”

“After 2012 number of strikes went down, but the work went up,” said Metje. “People have changed their practices so there was a lot more awareness. In 2010, the Utility Detection Mapping Forum was formed, and industry changed their awareness. It’s actually better than what the picture shows. A lot of contractors introduced safety procedures, monitored strikes, devices, survey industry change, and there was a lot of movement within the industry, and better records.”

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2016/12/08/mapping-the-underground/feed/04762Bentley Media Day: Government and Utilitieshttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2016/11/10/bentley-media-day-government-and-utilities/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2016/11/10/bentley-media-day-government-and-utilities/#respondThu, 10 Nov 2016 22:21:34 +0000http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=4724On Media Day at the Bentley Year In Infrastructure 2016 Conference held in London, the media was treated to Industry presentations for the various industry segments that Bentley Systems serves. The event is a vehicle for Bentley’s jurored Be Inspired Awards, which are bestowed on the selected finalists at a Wednesday evening gala event. Prior to the event, technology sessions highlight the work of the finalists and the company provides industry forums to showcase new technologies on the horizon.

Presented in the Government and Utilities presentation was Bentley’s Unified View of Data:

Modeling

Greater 3D collaboration

Multi-discipline design

Data

Greater collaboration with the supply chain

Common environments

Web publishing

Performance

Operational analytics

Asset reliability/health checking

The concept of “going digital” was introduced by Robert Mankowski, vice president, Project Development, Asset Performance at Bentley Systems, who explained that engineering and construction firms were using ProjectWise CONNECTEdition for a “going digital strategy,” that provides a live and open Connected Data Environment to improve project delivery.

“The Bentley products Amulet, eB, Ivara, InspectTech, Optram, SUPERLOAD, Exor, and Geo Web Publisher have been serving need of owner/operators for ten years or so, and are workhorses to help them manage assets and inspections and focus on spatial enablement and mapping of their assets,” said Smith.

AssetWise ConnectEdition makes possible the merging of assets and solutions into a connected environment. They can add adjacent capabilities easily. The Connected Data Environment provides both comprehensive project delivery and asset performance TOTEX. It is able to easily receive information and put it into context for reuse.

While spatial and network aware, the environment enables information to be referenced along pipe networks or on a map.

Wang Wei, Team Leader of Digital Center, Hubei Electric Engineering Corporation, had this to say about their experience: “Bentley’s digital platform solution has been fully applied across multiple disciplines and phases of the Miaoshan 220kV Secondary Transformer Substation project, bringing significant improvements to design efficiency and quality, providing strong technical support for construction, operations and maintenance. This project achieved good social and economic benefits.”

Bentley Substation enjoys a new release which sports the following capabilities:

Robert Mankowski spoke on the topic, “Reality Modeling and Hydraulic Modeling.”

“Reality modeling is our tool designed to create a model of existing reality as the basis of your design,” said Mankowski. “And Reality Modeling goes mainstream for project delivery and owner operators.”

Existing infrastructure projects are undergoing constant change. With the advent of smartphones with GPS and camera capabilities, as well as advances in algorithms, Bentley has been able to create this technology for modeling those existing conditions. GPS units built into phones provide location. Laser scanners, drones, iPhone, can capture images and point clouds from which users can reconstruct the 3D reality of existing conditions.

Bentley acquired Acute3D a year or so ago, which became their ContextCapture product. This year we are viewing the consumption of Reality Modeling. ContextCapture can enhance all aspects of the infrastructure asset lifecycle.

Capabilities of ConceptCapture include:

Hybrid inputs – point clouds and photos

Cloud service for convenience and higher performance

Support for ContextCapture meshes in ConceptStation and ConstructSIM

Meshes and photos managed by ProjectWise

ContextCapture has become a key technology in a short space of time. 15 of 60+ Be Inspired Award finalists are using it this past year. 68 countries are using it. The latest edition supports laser scanning for improved accuracy.

The City of Helsinki, winners in the category, Innovation in Reality Modeling, used the technology for modeling the entire city of Helsinki.

Challenges and outcomes of their project are as follows:

Problem:

To model the entire city of Helsinki using over 50,000 digital photographs

Outcomes:

ContextCapture created a reality model of the entire city

The reality model Is integrated with their already existing city information model based on CityGML standards.

The data produced will be provided for free to the public and stakeholders via a Web portal.

“You can do queries and visualizations like you would with a GIS, combining the vector data of subsurface utilities with a BIM model embedded in there,” said Mankowski. “By using the structure of the BIM model we can display parts of it in the reality context.

The cost effectiveness of this technique allows it to be done frequently and rapidly, mashing up different time periods of reality context models that were built. You couldn’t do this with traditional survey methods.”

The product Bentley LumenRT was created by leaders in digital nature, Eon Software. The technology, used in the motion picture industry, enlivens the visualizations you have created by combining proposed reality with existing reality. You can look inside buildings from floor to floor, simulate the time and day of the year. LumenRT is built into ConceptStation and available for general access.

Bentley Descartes accelerates the use of Reality Modeling in engineering workflows, by processing point cloud data and reality meshes for the engineering workflow.

Hydraulic modeling

In the area of hydraulic modeling, Mankowski pointed to the Bentley products WaterGEMS, WaterCAD and HAMMER CONNECTEditions for which the company has added the following capabilities:

Create and manage customized reports

Updated user interface

Operate pumps and valves based on their historical values imported from SCADA systems

Model turbines for energy and revenue generation

Create moves of model animations to share with project stakeholders

Integrate with AssetWise Operational Analytics.

These CONNECTEditions are available now for general access.

Mankowski summarized by pointing out that utility experts are scared to death of cyber security. “One of our business solutions is around safety and compliance asset management platform; this is a key opportunity to leverage the power of this built into business solutions.”

“Microsoft Azure cloud has all the security ratings, and is ISO 271 certified,” he continued. “It has all processes in place, and we have a cyber security group that reviews and does testing.”

For smart cities, there is so much information coming in to the emerging field. The challenge is how to talk about smart cities in an intelligent way, said Mankowski.

“Can we achieve a smart city?” The question was asked. The process will be different with different cities, but the model can become more granular with time and experience, said Mankowski. The possibilities of integrating with Maximo, a work management system, Esri data, new BIM models that display the interiors of buildings and subsurface, combined with ioT models are seemingly limitless.

*While we make our best effort to cover the above listed topics, we have no way of predicting what current events will prevail over the course of the year. Fortunately, in the context of blog coverage, we can cover a great deal of news. We have listed events that we plan to attend, but there may be others that are not on our list. Please let us know if you have an event that we might want to cover. Please contact Susan Smith susan.smith@ibsystems.com or Sanjay Gangal sanjay.gangal@ibsystems.com

]]>https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2016/11/08/giscafe-editorial-calendar-2017/feed/04720GISCafe Exhibiting at GEOINT 2016 in Orlandohttps://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2016/05/10/giscafe-exhibiting-at-geoint-2016-in-orlando/
https://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/2016/05/10/giscafe-exhibiting-at-geoint-2016-in-orlando/#respondWed, 11 May 2016 02:25:07 +0000http://www10.giscafe.com/blogs/gissusan/?p=4452GEOINT 2016 in Orlando next week is expected to be an exciting conference for the government sector.

One way to make sure you don’t miss anything is to download the official GEOINT 2016 Mobile App available for iOS, Android, and Blackberry devices. The app provides up-to-date agenda changes, news announcements, wayfinding, social media feeds, hotel and convention center maps, exhibit hall floor plans, and much more. On Sunday, golf is also offered for those enthusiasts.

USGIF is excited to announce it has partnered with Actifio, Dell, i3 ICS, and MiniLane.com to provide a bowling alley on the exhibit hall floor at GEOINT 2016. More serious business of the day will be offered in keynotes, lightning talks, training and education sessions and panel discussions. The Government Pavilion Stage will feature talks by various government executives.

GISCafe will be conducting video interviews with company president, Sanjay Gangal, at booth #220 in the Exhibit Hall. Attendees can drop in a business card to sign up for a KindleFire Sweepstakes and register for our daily newsletter. Contact Sanjay at sanjay@ibsystems.com if you want to book a 15-minute interview slot.

Editor Susan Smith will be conducting editorial interviews, attending keynotes and educational sessions during the conference. Contact Susan at susan.smith@ibsystems.com if you wish to schedule an interview.